Fiddling with Fate Read online

  Chloe opened her daypack and retrieved the doily and the blackwork cloth carefully packed inside. “I understand your area of expertise is Norwegian textiles.”

  “By training and by passion.”

  A kindred soul, Chloe thought as she unwrapped the white doily. “As I said on the phone, this piece of Hardanger embroidery might have been made by one of my ancestors. My mother was adopted. The woman who surrendered her to an orphanage in Wisconsin was named Amalie Sveinsdatter, and I believe this doily was surrendered with her. I suspect my mother’s family came from somewhere in the Hardanger region.” She spread the protective cloth she’d brought over the table before displaying the treasure.

  Sonja leaned close. “Oh, that’s quite nice. As I’m sure you know, Hardangersaum involves both cutting threads and drawing threads together to create openwork designs. This piece balances both techniques beautifully. And …” She turned the doily over. “The back looks as good as the front.”

  Chloe felt a flush of pride, as if she’d made the doily herself. “Any guesses as to how old it might be?”

  Sonja tipped her head, considering. “The delicate work is reminiscent of older styles—mid-eighteen-hundreds, perhaps. But the gauge of the cotton suggests the first decade or two of this century. After the Victorian period, when everything was fussy, designs began to simplify around 1920. The scale got larger. There was less filling in the little open blocks.”

  “Some of the open blocks here are filled in,” Chloe observed, trying to keep up. She certainly recognized Hardanger cutwork embroidery when she saw it—the satin stitch kloster blocks, the pulled and drawn threadwork—but she’d never studied the design nuances.

  “Yes, and the maker took the time to decorate the other open blocks with these delicate picots.” Sonja pointed at a series of minuscule loops adding texture and depth to the doily’s openwork areas. “My best guess? The piece is only fifty or sixty years old, but the maker was quite skilled.”

  “Cool.” Roelke sounded impressed, although Chloe wasn’t sure if he was admiring Sonja’s analysis or the unknown stitcher’s talent. Chloe was impressed with both.

  “Kaffe.” The waitress arrived with a tray and delivered two steaming mugs. Chloe snatched the doily from the table and tucked it away, being careful not to reuse the same fold lines.

  “First things first,” Sonja said firmly, and carefully pushed the mugs and her wineglass to one corner of the table.

  Chloe extracted the second package. “The workmanship on this one isn’t on par with the doily, but I think it’s older.” She unfolded the linen rectangle decorated with geometric black designs.

  “My God.” Sonja’s eyes went wide. “A handaplagg.”

  Chloe had never heard the term. “A what?”

  Sonja made an impatient gesture, as if everyone should know. “A hand cloth. Women once covered their hands with them when they went to church. Except for weddings, the practice died out in the mid-eighteen-hundreds.”

  “So … this is pretty old, then?”

  “I’d say so.” Sonja hadn’t taken her gaze from the handaplagg. “Look how fine the linen is—that’s another clue. Maybe … fifty count?”

  “Yikes.” Fifty threads to the inch, she meant. The last cotton Chloe had bought for an embroidery project was twenty-two count.

  “This was likely made in the seventeen hundreds. It’s a very valuable artifact.”

  Roelke whistled.

  “Is this type of work especially known locally, or is it done all over Norway?” Chloe asked.

  “I’d say this one is particular to the Hardanger region. Similar cloths have been found in other parts of Hordaland County, but most especially in Hardanger.”

  One more piece of evidence suggesting my family roots are in Hardanger, Chloe thought with a familiar quiver in her chest. Something about this piece affected her. Every time she took it from its tissue shroud she felt the same frisson of—of something undefined …

  “Do you mind if I snap a photo?” Sonja pulled a camera from her bag and took several shots before reaching for her wineglass.

  Time is short, Chloe reminded herself. “The embroidery appears to be unfinished.” She gestured toward the unadorned end of the rectangle.

  “No, no, it’s complete,” Sonja assured her. “That plain part hung behind the hands, so there was no point in adding decoration.”

  “Oh.” Chloe nodded. “What do you make of these errors?” She pointed toward the motifs that hadn’t been properly centered.

  “They only add to the charm of the piece.” Sonja glanced at her watch, frowned slightly, and tossed back the remains of her wine. “My flight will start boarding soon. Anyway, the woman who created this handaplagg was expressing herself, yes? The ideas were more important than achieving perfection in the stitches.”

  Chloe frowned, perplexed. “The ideas …”

  “The symbols.” Sonja was gathering her handbag and carry-on. “I’m sorry, I really must go.” She glanced at Chloe, seemed to recognize her confusion, and paused. “It’s as if someone wrote a brilliant essay, but the handwriting wasn’t perfect. What does it matter, if the thoughts are clear?”

  That made certain sense, Chloe admitted. “But what thoughts …” she began, then swallowed the rest. Sonja was already on her feet.

  “I hope we can talk again,” Sonja said. “It was very good to meet you both.” With that, she hurried away.

  Roelke felt a little better after downing the coffee. “Was that helpful?”

  “It was.” Chloe swirled the dregs of her caffeine in her mug. “It was certainly nice to hear that the Hardangersaum doily shows good workmanship. And Sonja thought it was made about the time my mother was born.”

  Roelke wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Does that have some significance?”

  “Well … I don’t know,” Chloe acknowledged. “But it might. I’m not sure I totally understood what Sonja said about the blackwork piece, though. What ideas was the stitcher trying to convey back in seventeen hundred whatever?”

  “How could we ever know?” Roelke considered the woman he loved. He still had some doubts about the trip. She was so enthused, so hopeful … he didn’t want her to be disappointed if she couldn’t trace Marit’s family here in Norway. “Maybe the museum director will have more information for you tomorrow.”

  “Maybe. One thing is clear, though. While the doily is special, the handaplagg is obviously a real treasure. Made in the seventeen hundreds!” Chloe’s eyes glinted. “Can you imagine?”

  “Not really,” he admitted. He had a lot less experience imagining old times than she did. “But it’s very cool.”

  “Well.” Chloe pushed back her chair, shrugged into the yellow daypack, and reached for her suitcase. “You ready to head out? Let’s go find the rental car place.”

  They eeled into the flow of business travelers trotting past with leather briefcases, jet-lagged tourists dragging bulging suitcases, harried parents trying to herd their children. Roelke veered to avoid a slow-moving toddler.

  Chloe pointed ahead to a sign for ground transportation and raised her voice. “I think it’s that way—” Her voice broke as she stumbled and crashed inelegantly to the floor.

  “Chloe!” Roelke crouched beside her, his brain filled with visions of bones broken before they’d even left the airport. “Are you all right?”

  “O-ow.” Wincing she sat up and nodded. He offered a hand, and she gingerly staggered to her feet. “Someone knocked me down!”

  A ring of the concerned or the curious was already forming. Roelke scanned the crowd without seeing anyone hovering with a guilty or apologetic expression. “Did you get a look at the guy?”

  She shook her head. “Someone just grabbed my pack from behind and yanked it really hard.”

  An elderly woman, looking worried, said something in Norweg
ian. “Thank you, I’m fine,” Chloe said. “Really.” She smiled an artificial smile until the bystanders were again on their way, then looked grimly at Roelke. “It didn’t feel like an accident.”

  Roelke did not like the sound of that. He should have been paying more attention.

  “If I hadn’t had the front strap hooked, I might have lost everything! My money, my credit card, my passport …” Her eyes filled with panic. “Oh my God, Roelke, he might have ended up with my family heirlooms!”

  “Come on,” he said, well aware that they were impeding traffic. “We should find a security guard and report this.”

  She shook her head. “No. It happened so fast …” The panic faded to a scowl directed down the corridor, evidently in the direction the SOB had disappeared.

  In an odd way, that was reassuring. Roelke could deal with an angry Chloe better than an upset Chloe.

  “And since they didn’t get away with anything,” she added, “there really isn’t anything to report. Let’s just get going, okay?”

  Roelke hesitated. It went against the cop grain to just walk away. But … she was right. He could imagine a guard’s polite response: You didn’t see what the man looked like? Perhaps he was trying to rob you, or perhaps it was just an unfortunate accident. Someone in a hurry … Roelke contented himself with touching her cheek, giving the strap on her daypack a little tug to make sure it was still secure. “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. All I want to do right now is get on the road.” She started walking again. But when he caught up with her, she gave him an anxious look, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “I know that losing my cash and credit card and camera on day one would cause colossal problems. But it’s horrifying to think he might have gotten my textiles. They may be the only things left of my Norwegian ancestors.”

  Five

  Gudrun—May 1838

  Gudrun leaned closer to the window as rose streaked the sky over the western mountains. Her eyes were not as sharp as they’d once been, her fingers not as nimble with the needle. But she was almost finished updating the handaplagg she had received long ago from her mother’s mother, adding a few special touches for Lisbet, her oldest son’s youngest daughter.

  Lisbet, Gudrun’s favorite grandchild, was getting married tomorrow. They would no longer share daily chores and walks and whispered confidences. Is that why I’m sensing shadows? Gudrun wondered. She’d been filled with a sense of foreboding all day. That afternoon she’d carefully polished the silver bangles dangling from the family’s bridal crown. When Gudrun had married seventy-three years earlier, everyone understood that the silver’s soft tinkling would scare away malevolent spirits. Everyone understood that the pastor covered the right hands of the couple to protect the marriage from evil. Some people today scoffed at such ideas, which only compelled Gudrun to do what she could to protect her family.

  She glanced across the room, where her daughter-in-law was organizing food for the wedding feast. Three other families shared a courtyard with theirs, and neighbors had been stopping by the farm all day with gifts of lefse and butter, salmon and sausages, many-layered almond cakes and sponge cakes made festive with beaten cream and fresh fruit. Lisbet’s sharp-tongued mother was actually humming, clearly pleased with the contributions … and oblivious to Gudrun’s unease.

  Gudrun had perceived things unseen since she was a young girl. Sometimes she felt strong emotions lingering in old buildings—anger, fear, grief, joy. Sometimes she sensed some momentous event that had yet to unfold. She couldn’t explain, predict, or control such impressions. But they were very real.

  Her own grandmother had experienced such things too, and told Gudrun secret stories about the old times. She had impressed upon Gudrun the importance of passing on this knowledge to the right female descendant. “Sometimes the gift passes a generation by,” the old woman had explained. Gudrun hadn’t glimpsed the gift in any of her own daughters, or in Lisbet’s older sisters. She thought that Lisbet, always eager to hear stories about the old ways, might be the one.

  Usually Gudrun accepted her gift without disquiet. But today, she thought as she squinted at the fine linen, I need to understand what’s troubling me.

  She wasn’t worried about the couple, even though Lisbet and Lars had made the match themselves instead of letting their elders settle things. It had taken some time to convince Lisbet’s parents of its suitability.

  “He is the fourth son, with no prospects,” Lisbet’s mother had protested. “Don’t be a fool! You will have to scrape and struggle for every mouthful.”

  Lisbet merely shrugged. “We’ll manage.”

  “He has no land,” Gudrun’s son had added. “How can you marry with no farm?”

  “Lars fishes in every spare moment to earn money of his own,” Lisbet said quietly. “It will take time, but we will have a bit of land one day.”

  Gudrun saw the longing in the girl’s eyes, so she’d stayed silent during the early months of discussion, sizing up Lars for herself. Lars was not a particularly handsome young man. He had a stocky build, a crooked smile, the big rough hands of a farmer. But his gaze was steady. He spoke of his ambitions with quiet assurance. He looked at Lisbet with a mix of affection and awe, as if he could hardly believe his good fortune.

  In the end it had been Gudrun who settled things. “He’ll do,” she’d told her son. “Lars is a hard worker. He’ll take good care of Lisbet.” Gudrun admired Lars for daring to work for what he wanted despite the difficulties, and for proving himself.

  And yet … she felt trouble gathering, like black clouds building before a storm.

  Perhaps I’ve just lived too long, seen too much, Gudrun thought. Recent years had brought bitter rifts to the communities clinging to the steep land along the fjord, and she didn’t want discord to taint the wedding. Just that afternoon a visiting neighbor woman had wrinkled her nose toward kegs of ale and akevitt other families had donated for the feast. She was a member of the new totalafholdsforeninger, a total abstinence society formed after a new law allowed liquor production at home.

  Gudrun snorted as she knotted her black silk thread. She didn’t appreciate belligerent drunkenness, and she’d seen brawls mar more than one wedding party. But how could a family celebrate a marriage without drinking to the new couple’s health?

  The abstainers were part of the religious movement that had been spreading through rural Norway for some years. Last month a wandering preacher proclaiming “the living faith,” as some called it, had held a revival meeting in nearby Aga. Gudrun had heard tales of men weeping, women wailing, sober people condemning themselves. The movement was part of the Lutheran tradition—but it was also forbidden. Only one church was legal in Norway. Membership was mandatory, and it was against the law to gather for worship without a Church of Norway pastor present. Longtime neighbors quarreled about God’s true intentions in hushed but strident tones on the fish docks, when hanging hay to dry—even in the Kinsarvik churchyard after service, when rural folk lingered to share news, conduct business, and settle accounts.

  Gudrun spread the cloth she’d been stitching over her lap. It was old, but she’d cared for it well. The linen was still crisp; the original black embroidery silk still dark and even. Her own grandmother had stitched her blessings and fears into this cloth. Most of the symbolism Gudrun understood, but she’d been young when her grandmother died. Are there messages in the patterns that I’ve missed? she wondered, touching the old threads with a gnarled finger. Have I misinterpreted something I’m meant to pass on? Will coming generations understand what I’ve contributed?

  Her own stitches blended well with what had been done so long ago. She’d added multiple tree motifs to symbolize the connections of all life—past and present, good and evil, pagan and Christian. And she’d added a female figure to honor the disir, spirits who guarded women and linked their families from one generation to the next throu
ghout time.

  Gudrun placed both of her palms on the cloth. Closing her eyes, she sent a prayer for protection into the fine linen …

  Lisbet burst through the door, startling Gudrun from her reverie. The young woman’s face glowed with happiness as she regarded the food, the bridal crown nestled in its box. She strode to her grandmother’s chair so exuberantly that her braids swung back and forth. Gudrun barely had time to fold her gift away so it would be a surprise tomorrow.

  “I can hardly believe the day has finally come!” Lisbet kissed Gudrun on the cheek.

  By the time Lisbet had been born, six other children were already underfoot. Lisbet’s mother had been too tired, too busy to spare particular time and attention to the new baby, so Gudrun had taken a primary role in raising the child. The old stories had always helped Gudrun make sense of the world, and she’d done her best to school Lisbet in those as well as practical skills.

  I hope I did enough, Gudrun thought now, for I am out of time. She took Lisbet’s hand and smiled, trying to hide her presentiment of disaster.

  Six

  “Holy Mother of God!” Roelke yelped as a tour bus roared past with approximately three-quarters of an inch to spare. His mouth had gone dry and he swallowed hard, trying to regain his composure.

  “Would you like me to drive?” Chloe asked.

  “No.”

  “Your knuckles are white, Roelke. Take a break.”

  “No,” he repeated, although he did ease his death grip on the steering wheel. He was not enjoying his first international driving experience. What had looked on the map like a relatively easy jaunt to the ferry that would take them to Utne was actually a narrow, twisting road clinging to the mountains plunging into a fjord. At times there was room for two vehicles. At times there was not. With luck there was a small pullout where one driver could swerve to avoid a head-on collision. If not, somebody had to back up fast.